The Rising Sun Does Not Remember
by Zagzagael
Summary: coda 4x14 - focusing on Caroline, Tyler, Klaus...in the aftermath of Bonnie's spell falling. Tyler has been told to run, Caroline has been told it's all for her, Klaus is conflicted.


Slowly, on toe-tip, she rocked herself in the Gilbert's porch swing. Eyes closed, she bent her head and covered her ears with both hands. Pressed in hard against the bones of her skull. Refused to listen to the two sets of footsteps echoing down the suburban sidewalks. Compass points north and south, away from one another, but more than that, away from the axis center she had reluctantly been pinned to. Her heart spinning on point, holding everything close, holding everything at arm's length. She began to hum a snippet from some drippy love song, screwing her eyes closed tighter, even tighter. There were no more tears. She was done with that now. Instead, she waited to see how badly the crack in her heated heart would break in this newly frozen place.

* * *

His heart felt strange. Not heavy but damp. Filled with an incomprehensible sea-soaked lightness, as though stuffed with wetted cotton. His pace picked up. He wanted, with the tear tracks like wounds, to feel pain, to feel despair but the animal inside of him was rejoicing in the escape. The running, the bolting. He wanted to be gone, to get gone, to run and run and run; not to hide but to explode in fur and bone, tooth and claw, find a place of body and not of mind. Faster and faster he moved. He was jogging, then sprinting, and finally, his thoughts wept out of him, dried on his face. He snarled and in one giant leap forward, away from her, he transformed into the wildest part of himself. And the last human emotion he felt was a kind of joy and then his paws hit the cold cement and everything became wolf and wild and free. He ran.

* * *

The finely honed weapon of his body, the razor sharp edges of his mind were dulled and chipped. The hungry blade of himself had wanted to feel the weight of the slice, the severing, the blooding of the boy. The black monster lurking behind his teeth and tongue had wildly, desperately, ached to feed on heartsblood and gristle. But again, and again, and again, she had stalled then stilled the murderous intent. He stopped for a long moment on the sidewalk, shoulders up around his ears. He gaped open his mouth and pulled huge gasping breaths deep into his lungs, let his fangs elongate and drew the air over the porcelain points. Confusion, regret, longing, desire, hope, hopelessness, anger, rage, and incomprehensible pain. He tipped his face up to the night sky, eyes closed as he reveled in the sensation of filling his body with something lighter, cleaner than emotion. His shoulders relaxed, he rolled his beautiful head from side to side, pulling his lips back over his bared teeth and let the vampire fade away, tamped it back down. But within him the sea of emotions still churned and crashed upon the bone white sand where he stood wanting nothing more than to be swept away by the girl.

* * *

The long night had been an unbearable struggle of broken sleep and haunting ghosts and the terrible smell of Kol's ashed corpse. She had gone back into the house and for reasons unexplored lay down on the sofa where she had spent timeless moments in Klaus's arms. She curled around her body, pressing her face against the cushions, wanting and not wanting to remember the sharp angles of his body, the weight of his arm, the curl of his fingers, the taste of his blood. She had waited for the heart-broken pain of Tyler's leaving to drown her and it strangely never pulled her under or was too shallow a depth to descend into. Instead, she kept pushing away thoughts of Klaus and each time she fell into ragged sleep only to wake from dreams of his arms around her, holding her head above dark waters.

When the morning sunlight filtered through the windows, falling upon her face, waking her with warm touches on her eyelids, she sat up and rubbed briskly at her arms, felt the loss of the embrace. And there, just there, far off on the edges of her hearing, was the unmistakable sound of iron-shod horse hooves on asphalt. She squinted, then stood and walked as though beckoned out the front door, onto the porch, down the wide wooden steps and out to the edge of the road. She looked down the tree-lined street and watched him approach. Her dead heart leaping to life behind her ribs.

* * *

He woke naked and warm in a darkened den. The sounds of birds in a symphony with stirring leaves of trees. He smelled deeply and inhaled the scent of forest and dirt and safety. His mouth was dry and his tongue moved across the heavy feel of his teeth. For a quick sharp moment he remembered the night before, the leave-taking, the fear, the anger and he breathed out and let it dissipate. With a narrowing focus of his mind, he became the wolf again, climbed to his feet, circled and circled, then lay back down and rested his muzzle on his paws and slept a dreamless sleep.

* * *

He had walked and walked and walked. Carried himself out of the edges of suburban Mystic Falls, into the wide roads lined with gentlemen ranches. He spent the dark hours talking aloud to himself, arguing, and venting, and ranting. Finally, as the sun rose like a lover from her bed of hill and dale, coloring the world new, he began to sing an old song with words he had long forgotten but with a tune that fit itself well inside his mouth. He made up new lyrics about these crazy modern times and the girl, of course, the girl. A horse snorted at him on the other side of a white-washed fence and he stepped off the tarmac and clicked to the gentle beast and she stretched her nose out to him and he let his fingertips ghost the velvet hair of her muzzle and he smiled.

It was simple work to walk into the barn, rifle the tack room, and saddle the two horses. He swung his body up and into the saddle with a moment of crystal clear clarity. A feeling of such unbearable freedom engulfed him that he actually gasped. He settled onto the back of the white gelding, reaching for the reins of the palomino mare, and speaking softly to both horses he headed back into town.

Cresting the road where the Gilbert house sat, riding down the center line, breathing in the morning air, his ears perked to the sound of Caroline's heart quickening and his own heart's beat answered.


End file.
